U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alexander Cook
- Salvage teams have managed to recover more pieces of the F-35 stealth fighter that vanished almost a month ago in the Pacific.
- Parts of the flight recorder and the cockpit canopy were found on the ocean floor, but key components that could offer insight into the crash are missing.
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More pieces from an F-35 stealth fighter that disappeared in the Pacific have been found, the Japanese defense minister revealed Tuesday.
A Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter piloted by Maj. Akinori Hosomi mysteriously vanished from radar on April 9. The day after the crash, pieces of the tail were found floating on the surface of the water, but the rest of the fifth-generation fighter was nowhere to be found.
Read more: Wreckage from crashed Japanese F-35 fighter found, pilot still missing
The fighter, believed to be lying somewhere on the ocean floor, has been missing for weeks, despite the best efforts of the US and Japanese militaries to find it.
U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Benjamin W. Stratton/Handout via REUTERS
Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya announced Tuesday that parts of the flight recorder and cockpit canopy had been discovered at an unspecified location on the ocean floor, CNN reported. The flight recorder was retrieved by a US Navy salvage team dispatched to assist in the search.
The defense minister said the flight recorder is in "terrible" condition. Critical memory components are reportedly missing, meaning that key data about the crash, the first for an F-35A, may be unavailable. Exactly what happened to the stealth fighter remains a mystery.
The downed F-35, which was built by Lockheed Martin but assembled by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Ltd., is one of a growing fleet of Japanese stealth fighters. In response to the crash, Japan grounded its remaining F-35s. They will remain on the ground while the related investigation is ongoing.
Japan currently has 12 F-35s, but it has another 147 stealth fighters on order. B variants with that need little runway to take off and land are expected to eventually serve on Japanese light aircraft carriers while the A variant will become the primary fighter of the Japanese air force.
The search for the missing fighter and its pilot is expected to continue.
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- The US wants to ‘push back’ on China’s new stealth fighter by sending more F-35s to the Pacific
Source: Business Insider – rpickrell@businessinsider.com (Ryan Pickrell)